University at Albany, SUNY
The State University of New York at Albany is a public research university in Albany, New York, United States. Founded in 1844, it is one of four "university centers" of the State University of New York system. In 2024, the university enrolled 17,567 students in nine schools and colleges, which offer over 50 undergraduate majors and over 150 graduate degree programs. Portions of the campus extend into Guilderland, and the health sciences campus is located in neighboring Rensselaer, New York. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research spending and doctorate production". The research enterprise totaled expenditures of $115 million in fiscal year 2021 and was focused in four areas: social science, public law and policy, life sciences and atmospheric sciences. UAlbany is home to the New York State Writers Institute.
History
The University at Albany was an independent state-supported teachers' college for most of its history until SUNY was formed in 1948. The institution began as the New York State Normal School on May 7, 1844, by a vote of the State Legislature. Beginning with 29 students and four faculty in an abandoned railroad depot on State Street in the heart of the city, the Normal School was the first New York State-chartered public institution of higher education.Originally dedicated to training New York students as schoolteachers and administrators, by the early 1890s it had become the New York State Normal College at Albany and, with a revised four-year curriculum in 1905, was the first public institution of higher education in New York to be granted the power to confer the bachelor's degree.
A new campus—today, UAlbany's Downtown Campus—was built in 1909 on a site of between Washington and Western avenues. By 1913, the institution was home to 590 students and 44 faculty members, offered a master's degree for the first time, and bore a new name—the New York State College for Teachers at Albany. Enrollment grew to a peak of 1,424 in 1932. By this time, the college had developed a curriculum similar to those found at four-year liberal arts colleges, but it did not abandon its primary focus on training teachers.
In 1948 the State University of New York system was created, with the College for Teachers and the state's other teacher-training schools serving as the nuclei. SUNY, including the Albany campus, became a manifestation of the vision of Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, who wanted a public university system to accommodate the college students of the post–World War II baby boom. To do so, he launched a massive construction program that developed more than 50 new campuses. Reflecting a broadening mission, the College for Teachers changed its name to SUNY College of Education at Albany in 1959. In 1961, it became a four-year liberal arts college as the State University College at Albany.
In 1962, the State University College was designated a doctoral-degree granting university center. The same year, Rockefeller broke ground for the current Uptown Campus on the former site of the Albany Country Club. The new campus' first dormitory opened in 1964, and the first classes on the academic podium in the fall of 1966. By 1970, enrollment had grown to 13,200 and the faculty to 746. That same year, the growing protest movement against the Vietnam war engulfed the university when a student strike was called for in response to the killing of protesters at Kent State. In 1985, the university added the School of Public Health, a joint endeavor with the state's Department of Health.
In 1983, the New York State Writers Institute was founded by Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Kennedy. As of 2013, the Institute had hosted more than 1,200 writers, poets, journalists, historians, dramatists, and filmmakers. The list includes eight Nobel Prize winners, nearly 200 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners, several Motion Picture Academy Award winners and nominees, and numerous other prize recipients.
During the 1990s, the university built a $3 billion, Albany NanoTech complex, extending the Uptown Campus westward. By 2006, this addition became home to the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, which in 2014 merged with the State University of New York Institute of Technology in Utica, New York, to become a separate SUNY institution: the SUNY Polytechnic Institute. This was reversed in 2023, when the college rejoined UAlbany as part of the College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering.
In 1996, a third campus—the East Campus, renamed the Health Sciences Campus in 2016—was added east of the Uptown Campus in Rensselaer County.
In 2004, the university launched the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, the first college in the nation to focus exclusively on nanotechonology, semiconductor development and chip manufacturing. In 2014, the college merged with SUNY IT to become SUNY Polytechnic Institute. In 2023, CNSE was reunified with UAlbany to form the College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering.
In 2005, the university created a College of Computing and Information, with faculty on both the Uptown and Downtown campuses. In the fall of 2015, the college was replaced and its programs incorporated into the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. At the same time, the university opened another new college, the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity.
In 2016, the university launched its first undergraduate degree in computer engineering as part of the newly formed College of Engineering & Applied Sciences. The college later added undergraduate and graduate programs in electrical and computer engineering, environmental and sustainable engineering along with preexisting programs in computer science.
On June 21, 2017, Havidan Rodriguez, founding provost of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and former interim president of the University of Texas-Pan American, was named the 20th president of the university, a position he assumed in September 2017. Rodríguez became the first Hispanic/Latino president of any of the four-year SUNY campuses.
Name changes
Campuses
Uptown Campus
The Uptown Campus, the university's main campus, is located mostly in Albany, with a small portion spilling into the McKownville neighborhood in the neighboring town of Guilderland. Its visual effect has been described as "Dazzling one-of-a-kind" by architectural critic Thomas A. Gaines, who called it "a formal masterpiece" and "a study in classical romanticism." Designed in 1961–1962 by noted American architect Edward Durell Stone and constructed from 1963 to 1964, the campus bears Stone's signature style that includes towers, domes, fountains, colonnades, canopies, and other features typical for the era. Stone's campus layout emphasizes residential quadrangles, also known as "quads", surrounding the academic buildings.At the hub of the Uptown Campus is the rectangular "Academic Podium", featuring 13 three-story buildings under a single overhanging canopy roof. The Podium's showpiece is a central pool with fountains and an off-center circular bell tower, or "Carillon", which also serves as a water storage reservoir. In April 2012, the university undertook a complete renovation of the main fountain and water tower area, as well as of the Campus Center fountain. There is LED lighting in the base of the fountain, and a new, more interactive center element with seating areas. Completion of the project is scheduled for fall 2013.
The domed Main Library, the Performing Arts Center, and Campus Center face the pool from the west, east and south, respectively. The Campus Center was under construction from Spring 2015 and was finally completed Fall of 2017 adding more space and dining options for students. To the north is a grand entrance, which welcomes visitors by way of a "great lawn" and the university's Entry Plaza. Four residential quadrangles are located adjacent to the four corners of the academic podium. Each quad consists of a 23-story high-rise dormitory surrounded by a square of low-rise buildings.
On the west end of the Uptown Campus is the university's meteorology and characterization tools, the National Weather Service, and the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center.
In addition to the Main Library, the Uptown Campus became home in 1999 to the third of the three university libraries: the Science Library. Further growth occurred on the Uptown Campus in the fall of 2004, when a new Life Sciences Building opened, dedicated to basic research and education. New residence halls, Empire Commons and Liberty Terrace, opened in 2002 and 2012, housing up to 1,200 and 500 students, respectively, Ground was broken for a new School of Business building in October 2008. The 80,000-square-foot facility, located on the west side of Collins Circle, opened in August 2013.
Downtown Campus
The Downtown Campus, located at 135 Western Ave., Albany, just one mile from the New York State Capitol building and Empire State Plaza, is the site of the original New York State College for Teachers. Construction began in 1909 on the first three buildings: Draper, Husted and Hawley halls, after the previous location on Willett Street burned down. Later additions to the campus were Richardson Hall, Page Hall and The Milne School, as well as 1960s' additions to Draper and Richardson halls. Husted Hall underwent major renovations in 2009. A subsequent energy efficiency project at Husted Hall was awarded a High Performance Building Plaque from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.The Downtown Campus is home to the university's Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, School of Criminal Justice, and School of Social Welfare. It also houses one of the university's three libraries, the Thomas E. Dewey Graduate Library, located in Hawley Hall.
UAlbany purchased the Old Albany High School, also known as the Schuyler Building, in 2013 and is renovating it as the home for the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. It will house the Dean's Office as well as the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering.